Over 163 Million Impressions, Zero Paid Spend: What Idaho Potatoes Can Teach Legacy Food Brands About Staying Relevant

If you can make potatoes interesting, you can make anything interesting.

Potatoes are one of the most familiar foods in America. They’re affordable, widely used, and found in nearly every kitchen. That kind of ubiquity is a strength, but it also creates a challenge. When a product has always been part of everyday life, it can be harder to generate the kind of excitement that drives conversation, media attention, and cultural relevance.

That’s a reality many legacy food categories face. Awareness is high. Distribution is strong. But the emotional energy around the brand isn’t always where you want it to be. The product hasn’t changed, but the world around it has.

For the Idaho Potato Commission, the goal wasn’t to reinvent the product. It was to find new ways for the brand to show up in places people weren’t expecting, and to do it in a way that would earn attention instead of paying for it.

That thinking led to a New York Fashion Week program that generated more than 163 million impressions, over 600 media placements, and national broadcast coverage across the country — all without anyl paid amplification.

Here’s what that experience reinforced about how legacy brands can stay relevant.

When a Brand Shows Up in an Unexpected Place, People Pay Attention

During New York Fashion Week 2026, inside Grand Central Terminal, models walked a couture runway wearing garments made entirely from vintage Idaho potato sacks.

The Idaho Potato Commission partnered with EvansHardy+Young to create the Haute Potato Collection, a program designed to place one of the most familiar food products in America into one of the most unexpected cultural environments in the world.

The idea wasn’t to make potatoes fashionable.

It was to create a moment people would want to talk about.

The timing aligned with the 75th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s famous 1951 photograph wearing an Idaho potato sack dress; a piece of fashion history that gave the story an authentic cultural reference point. That connection helped anchor the idea in real brand heritage while allowing the program to participate in a much broader conversation around fashion, nostalgia, and American iconography.

The campaign ultimately generated more than 163 million total impressions and 637 media placements. This included 105 broadcast segments across 30 states, along with coverage in outlets such as People, InStyle, USA Today, and NBC’s TODAY Show. Social content reached millions, and traffic to IdahoPotato.com increased during the campaign, driven in part by a limited-edition dress auction benefiting No Kid Hungry.

These results were achieved primarily through earned media, social sharing, and editorial interest rather than paid media support.  

For a category most consumers see as everyday, showing up in a completely different context changed the way people looked at the brand.

Big Ideas Usually Don’t Start Perfect — They Get Better as You Build Them

Programs like this rarely begin as fully formed concepts. Most of the time, you start with a direction, not a finished idea.

The original goal was simply to create a moment in New York during Fashion Week that would allow Idaho Potatoes to participate in a conversation that was already happening. Early ideas ranged from a street-level pop-up to a grocery-store installation. As we explored locations, partners, and timing, the concept kept evolving until the opportunity to stage a runway show inside Grand Central Terminal came into focus.

Once that direction became clear, the standard changed. If we were going to show up at Fashion Week, the work had to belong there.

We invited an emerging designer from Idaho who had studied fashion in Paris to create the collection. We hired professional runway models. And we designed the production, staging, and signage to match the sophistication of a legitimate Fashion Week show.

This wasn’t about putting potato sacks on a runway for a laugh.

The designs had to be good. They had to feel like real fashion — thoughtful, well-constructed, and visually compelling. The irony of the idea is what made people stop and look, but the craftsmanship is what made them take it seriously.

When a brand steps outside its category and into a cultural space, the execution has to meet the standards of that world. Otherwise the idea feels like a stunt instead of something people actually want to talk about.

And that difference is usually what determines whether a moment stays small or makes waves.

The Story Worked Because It Had More Than One Angle

The Marilyn Monroe connection became an important part of the program, but it wasn’t the only reason the story broke through.

The collection tied together several authentic parts of the brand’s identity — Idaho agriculture, American heritage, humor, fashion, and philanthropy. The partnership with No Kid Hungry added a purpose-driven layer that connected the event back to what potatoes represent for many families: an affordable, nutritious staple.

Because the program offered multiple storylines, different audiences had different ways to engage with it.

• Fashion media focused on the runway.
• Lifestyle outlets focused on nostalgia.
• Local news covered the Idaho connection.
• Social audiences reacted to the visual surprise of seeing potato sacks turned into couture.

That kind of layered storytelling is often what turns a one-day stunt into a story with staying power. 

Execution Matters as Much as the Idea

One of the biggest misconceptions about earned-media programs is that the concept alone drives the results. In reality, the details determine whether the story spreads.

For the Haute Potato Collection, planning for coverage started as soon as the idea took shape. PR outreach, influencer participation, social content, and the charity auction were all developed alongside the event itself. The timing aligned with Fashion Week, when national media outlets were already in New York looking for stories.

Because distribution was part of the thinking from the beginning, every element had a role to play in how the story would travel beyond the room.

When creative, PR, social, and production are aligned early, you can transform a smart concept into an idea that can scale.

Is This the Right Kind of Play for Your Brand?

Not every brand needs a big cultural moment.

But if you’re in a mature category where awareness is high and energy is low, it’s worth asking whether traditional marketing is doing enough.

• If your brand feels like it’s spending more on paid media every year just to stay in the same place…
• If you’re competing with private label on price instead of meaning…
• If your product is in most households but rarely part of the conversation…

…that’s usually a sign the issue isn’t awareness.

It’s relevance.

Before going down this road, there are a few questions worth asking.

• Can you authentically connect your brand to a moment people already care about? It doesn’t have to be as iconic as a Marilyn Monroe photo. Sometimes it’s geography, history, or a product truth that’s been there all along.

• Is your team willing to let an idea evolve? The best earned-media ideas rarely look the same at the end as they did at the beginning. Scope expands. Partners appear. Opportunities open up. That only works when leadership is comfortable developing the idea instead of locking it in too early.

• Can creative, PR, social, and media work together from the start? The fastest way to weaken a big idea is to treat amplification as something that comes later.

• Are you ready to meet the standards of the space you’re entering? Fashion Week required fashion-level execution. If a brand wants to show up in culture, the work has to belong there.

When each of these pieces come together, the impact can look very different from what paid media alone can deliver.

The Real Efficiency Play Isn’t Always Paid Media

Marketing leaders are under constant pressure to prove efficiency, and paid media is easy to measure. But moments that earn attention instead of buying it can change the math.

The Haute Potato Collection delivered more than 163 million impressions, national broadcast coverage, and hundreds of media placements on a relatively modest budget. Based on standard media value benchmarks, achieving that level of exposure through paid media alone would likely have required a seven-figure investment.

That’s the difference between buying attention and earning it.

Legacy brands don’t always need reinvention. Sometimes they need to show up somewhere new — in a way that still feels true to who they are.

The potato didn’t change. Where it showed up did. And that made people look at it differently.

At EvansHardy+Young, we build ideas like this with creative, PR, social, and media working together from the start. When the strategy, the story, and the distribution are aligned, even the most familiar product can become part of the conversation again.

If your brand is ready to show up in culture — not just on the shelf — we’d love to talk.